Articulating Different Modes of Explanation: The Present Boundary in Biological Research -- Compromising Positions: The Minding\newline of Matter -- Abstractions, Idealizations, and Evolutionary Biology -- The Adequacy of Model Systems for Evo-Devo: Modeling the Formation of Organisms/ Modeling the Formation of Society -- Niche Construction in Evolution, Ecosystems and Developmental Biology -- Novelty, Plasticity and Niche Construction: The Influence of Phenotypic Variation on Evolution -- The Evolution of Complexity -- Self-Organization, Self-Assembly, and the Origin of Life -- Self-Organization and Complexity in Evolutionary Theory, or, in this Life the Bread Always Falls Jammy Side Down.

This volume is the best available tool to compare and appraise the different approaches of today’s biology and their conceptual frameworks, serving as a springboard for new research on a clarified conceptual basis. It is expected to constitute a key reference work for biologists and philosophers of biology, as well as for all scientists interested in understanding what is at stake in the present transformations of biological models and theories. The volume is distinguished by including, for the first time, self-reflections and exchanges of views on practice and theoretical attitudes by important participants in recent biological debates. The questions of how biological models and theories are constructed, how concepts are chosen and how different models can be articulated, are asked. Then the book explores some of these convergences between different models or theoretical frameworks. Confronting views on adaptive complexity are investigated, as well as the role of self-organization in evolution; niche construction meets developmental biology; the promises of the emergent field of ecological-evolutionary-development are examined. In sum, this book is a marvellous account of the dynamism of today’s theoretical biology.